Sporting new scipture and verse, the born-again
“Nunsense” at Theatre West is an answer
to the prayers of – well, “Nunsense”
worshippers, at least. With writer/creator Dan Goggin
at the director’s helm, we can certainly take
this version – revisions and all – as
gospel.

Unapologetically silly as ever, and strewn with
groaners and bad puns (“St. Francis was a
sissy”), Goggins satire about a quintet of
nuns from Hoboken putting on a fundraising talent
show in a high school gym is the kind of send0up
only someone heavily steeped in Catholicism could
dream up. Viewers of all faiths, however, will find
the laughs come with little penance to be paid in
this amiable revival.

This time, Goggin added dialogue and a new song
after Broadway and TV veteran (and Theatre West
board member) Betty Garrett expressed interest in
joining the production. To make room for her, Goggin
penned an onstage visitation from the previously
unseen Sister Julia, Child of God, a hapless cook
whose botuislm-laced vichyssoise accelerated the
heavenly ascension of most o the convernt. An ageless
trouper, Garrett is amusingly dotty and tap dances
with miraculous aplomb.

As the even more scatter-brained nun with no memory
of her past, Barbara Mallory’s gem of a performance
makes Sister Mary Amnesia not only funny but endearing.
Speaking in tongues (however firmly in cheek) Lee
Meriwether adopts a Joisey accent for Sister Robert
Anne, the star-struck nun from the wrong side of
the tracks. Adding to the fun are Bridget Hanley’s
emotive “Dying Nun Ballet,” Sandra Tucker’s
stern Mother Superior giddily succumbing to the
fumes of airplane glue and Rhonda Stovey belting
out the “Holier Than Thou” finale.

For all its reveling in Catholicism’s foibles,
what keeps “Nunsense” from becoming
mean-spirited is Goggin’s obvious underlying
affection for the structure and stability his upbringing
provided. Meriwether’s “Growing Up Catholic”
number at the start of Ac Two suspends satire to
express that sentiment with heartfelt sincerity.
-- Philip Brandes

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Recommended

NUNSENSE

Writer-director
Dan Goggin focuses on the whacked-out antics of
some feisty nuns with bad habits, the Little Sisters
of Hoboken. They’re decimated when a dinner
prepared by the convent’s cook, Sister Julia
Child of God (Betty Garrett), proves fatal for 52
of the sisters. Since Sister Mary Regina (Sandra
Tucker) spent part of the insurance money on a DVD
player, there are no funds to bury the last four
dead sisters. How do they solve this dilemma? By
putting on a show, of course, full of high-kicking
nuns, and numbers like “Tackle That Temptation
With a Time Step” and “The Dying Nun
Ballet.”

The
humor ranges from the outrageous to the primitive,
but it’s undeniably funny. Goggin keeps things
moving at a merry clip, and the six likeable ladies
acquit themselves splendidly. Octogenarian Garrett
proves she can still do a mean tap routine, and
Tucker performs an inspired comic riff as the Mother
Superior who gets stoned by sniffing a bottle of
Rush left in the school restroom. Theater West,
3333 Cahuenga Blvd. West, Hlywd.; Thurs.-Sat., 8
p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; thru March 6. (323) 851-7977.
Written 01/27/2005 (Neal Weaver)

Nunsense
is to nuns what Grease is to high schools. It seems
highly appropriate that the set for the latter is
the set for the former, the conceit being that Grease
is being performed by the students at the school
run by The Little Sisters of Hoboken. The Desperate
Sisters have usurped the set for an emergency fund-raiser
for a reason more ghoulish than girlish. This frothy
revue with its vaudevillesque double-entendres reveals
the repressed aspirations of the singing sisters.
It premiered off-Broadway in 1985 and has had a
healthy life on the road ever since.

The raison d'être for the current production
at Theatre West is a new character, song and dance
by creator/director Dan Groggin for Betty Garrett.
Sister Julia, Child of God, was only mentioned in
the original version. Garrett plays the elderly
sister and chef, who inadvertently poisoned most
of the order, with delicious comic charm. She's
ably supported by Lee Meriwetherr as Sister Robert
Anne who presents characters such as Sister Hiawatha
by hilarious twists of her veil; Bridget Hanley,
who plays tutu-mad ballerina Sister May Leo with
irrepressible yearning; radiant Rhonda Stovey as
Sister Mary Hubert; Barbara Mallory, who gives squeaky
comic relief to Sister Mary Amnesia ; and Sandra
Tucker, wry and crisp as the unsuperior mother,
Sister Mary Regina.